Suddenly taking 10x longer than normal to open an Excel file

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Level 1

4 points

Suddenly taking 10x longer than normal to open an Excel file

Hello,

Suddenly my Excel for Mac is taking 30 seconds to open a fairly simple 8 MB Excel file and when doing so it is burning 250%+ of my CPU. If I log into a different user account on my same computer, it takes only 2 or 3 seconds. Unfortunately, logging out of my user account and even an entire reboot of the Mac didn't help.

- I'm running OS 10.15.5 and Excel 16.38 which I believe are all the latest versions.

- The Mac is a MacBook Pro 16-inch 2019 that is almost completely brand new.

- This happens with multiple files, the latest of which is a 15 MB CSV file that I saved as an XLSX and it too took about 30 seconds to open. Again, these are large files, but since another user account (or even Excel for Windows) take only a few seconds to open this, as it should be.

I suspect something got corrupted in some preference or configuration in this user account perhaps, but has anyone else seen this behavior before?

FYI, this seems like a question for Microsoft, but a.) because it affects one user account but not the other, that is a bit suspicious and b.) calling MS wasn't too helpful and they obviously blamed the computer/OS :(

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Jun 17, 2020 1:10 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

evig_SD Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 17, 2020 2:23 PM in response to evig_SD

Actually, I just got a response here that seemed to solve it:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/29185682/Suddenly-taking-10x-longer-than-normal-to-open-an-Excel-file.html#a43107325

Basically I took out these files and restarted Excel and all seems fine (for now):

/Users/<user_account_name>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/

/Users/<user_account_name>/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Excel.savedState

/Users/<user_account_name>/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Excel.plist

/Users/<user_account_name>/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/containers/iCloud.com.microsoft.Office.Excel.plist

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Answer 2

LeeT787

Level 2

230 points

Jun 17, 2020 1:19 PM in response to evig_SD

Evig_SD,

Great to have you here on the forum.

Do you experience the issue if Excel is already "open" but just in the dock area? Does it still take 30+ seconds to open, or is it just the first time that Excel opens?

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Answer 3

evig_SD Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 17, 2020 1:25 PM in response to LeeT787

Sorry, let me clarify...Excel the app itself opens in just a few seconds. I can open small files instantly, but these larger files take so long to open the actual file itself. And obviously I know that bigger files take longer to open, but I'm comparing to how long that same file(s) take to open on another account on the same computer and that's where I'm realizing it's taking 10x longer than it should to open. And still, a file that is 8MB still isn't that big really...

Thanks!

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Suddenly taking 10x longer than normal to open an Excel file

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